True Love is Blind
by Ari Moriarty
Summary: A collection of companion pieces related to my story "Messiah," and the relationship between Adachi and Minako.
1. Use Your Imagination

**Author's Note: **We interrupt your regularly scheduled **Messiah** angstfest to bring you something slightly pithier. Lately, I've gotten a number of comments and PMS about Minako's blindness, and I'd like to answer some questions about how she sees the world and how her blindness works.

Now, all of this comes from my own, albeit limited experience with neurological blindness. This is how it worked for me, but because of the complex nature of the human body and brain, it probably didn't work this way for other people that you may know. I'm not trying to pass this off as "this is what happens when you're blind," but this is the way it happened for me. That's all I got.

I spent some of the time that I was totally blind in a hospital in Southern VA. I still have some very clear visual memories of the time I spent in that hospital. _That is clearly not possible. _The doctors attempted to explain this phenomenon to me, and this is my best effort to explain it, on Minako's behalf, to you.

Oh, and this little story fits somewhere into the timeline of **Messiah**, but to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure quite where. You can draw your own conclusions.

**Use Your Imagination**

"You look tired," remarked Minako, as she and Tohru sat at the bar at Shiroku pub.

"What? What are you talking about? You don't know what I look like," he said.

"You've been sighing and mumbling to yourself all night," Minako told him. "And you keep yawning. You sound like you look tired."

For some reason, that made Tohru laugh. "What's next?" he asked her. "Are you gonna start hearing colors and smelling sounds? You know, they make some pretty expensive drugs just to help you do that."

Minako ignored him. She was aware that it was a bad idea to try explaining herself to him. Long ago, Minako had learned that people preferred the simple to the complicated. She was blind; therefore, she could not see. Her world must, of course, be devoid of any visual images or stimuli. That was what it meant to be a blind person. Anything else, anything that broke that expected mold would just confuse and alarm people. Confusing things were frightening, and frightened people acted awkwardly around her. Feeling awkward around her would make them start to see her as weird, and creepy, and that would damage all sorts of personal relationships. No, it was much easier to just be the blind person everyone expected to know.

The truth of the matter was, though, that Minako's mind was a beautiful place. It was full of colors, lights, and nostalgic memory globes of dream-pictures that made the passing moments seem more real. She had detailed drawings in her head of every person that she met, and every place that she passed by on the way to work or to Junes or the shopping district.

It was easier, of course, when it was something she'd already seen. She'd never forget what Junpei's face looked like, not after all of the trials and tribulations they'd been through together. When she heard him talk, she could picture just what his face would look like in each of the familiar expressions that it went through during conversation. He grimaced when he was in pain, grinned and puffed himself up when he was proud, and pouted when he was put down. Minako watched him do all of those things in her head when the two of them were talking together.

Tohru Adachi, on the other hand, was a little more difficult. She'd only seen him once, and he didn't even know that she'd ever found out what he really looked like. Now, all she had to go on were the figments of her imagination that came to life when he spoke or moved or laughed, or yawned. She knew what his face basically looked like, and she had an idea of the way he wore his hair and hunched his shoulders, but she wouldn't have known if he lost weight or changed his shoes or anything like that. Still, when he sighed and groaned like he'd been doing all evening, it wasn't hard for Minako to picture a tired look in the eyes that she imagined herself staring into across the bar.

She had seen Shiroku pub a few times before she'd gone blind, so she had a basic idea of what the place looked like. That was the image that made its way through her mind when she walked in. Most of the time, she could only see a few people inside, based on the number of voices that she heard, or rather, didn't hear. Sometimes, though, when the bar was busy, she couldn't see all of the faces of the people due to the imagined crowds that must be packed into the corners. The boy behind the bar (and she knew it was a boy, because she'd heard his voice) had a very distinct look about him. She definitely pictured him in a very particular way, although when she really thought about it, she wasn't able to describe just what his face looked like. There was something about him that her mind recognized, even though she wouldn't have been able to pinpoint the elements of that recognition to anyone else. It didn't' make sense, but it didn't have to. Sometimes, the mind moved in mysterious ways, and that was all right with Minako, who had gotten used to going along for the ride.

"Hey, blind girl." Tohru's voice cut through Minako's distracted reflections. "You still with me? You…sorta zoned out there, for a minute. Is it past your bedtime already?"

Minako watched the teasing, slightly superior look on Tohru's face behind her eyes. "I bet you," she told him, "that I can prove to you, right here and now, that I'm not really blind."

"Uh." Tohru was surprised. "Was…that ever in question? I don't think you've been faking it. You're way too honest to be that good."

Shaking her head, Minako beckoned him closer to her. "No," she insisted, "I mean, I am blind, but I can still see. I'll show you. It's easy. Here, close your eyes."

"What are you going to do?" asked Tohru warily.

Minako frowned impatiently at him. "Just do it, okay?"

She waited a moment, until she finally heard Tohru's long-suffering little sigh of exasperation. "Fine, whatever you say," he said.

"Are your eyes closed?" asked Minako.

"Yeah," muttered Tohru, "they're closed. You're not gonna stick your fingers in them again, are you? Because I really don't-!"

Minako leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. She felt his little jerk of surprise, and then the way he relaxed and leaned eagerly into her lips, one hand braced against her shoulder, the other passing around the back of her neck.

She only let the kiss last a couple of moments before pulling away, leaving him sitting there, breathing just a little bit more rapidly than before.

"So? What did that look like?" she asked him.

"Wha-?" Tohru stammered. He paused for a moment, gave her a nervous little laugh, and then said, "Um, you know what, I don't know. It was too fast. Can I see it again?"

Minako smiled. Sliding off of her stool, she grabbed her coat and began pulling it on, picking up her bag as she prepared to leave.

"Yes," she told him, "you probably can. This time, though, you'll have to use your imagination."


	2. Judas Kiss

**Author's Note: **Honestly, I wasn't going to write today, but this piece is inspired, perhaps even prompted a conversation that I had earlier today with **Emd23. **Perhaps it's an exploration of her character, perhaps it's just something that was bothering me and that I needed to get out of my system. It's also a hint as to what's to come in **Messiah**, as we're going to be dealing with the issues of Minako's friendships and how that meshes with her romantic choices very soon in that story…

There were a ton of other beautiful, inspirational things written this morning. I wanted to write some Yosuke x Saki after reading **Miss Hanamura's** new chapter of **Measure Me**, and I wanted some Minako x Shinjiro after reading **der kapitan**'s fantastic new addition to **Twenty-Five Hours**. There is…so much good writing on the main page today…why are you still here reading this?

This story takes place during the timeline of **Messiah **and **Piecekeeping**,but before Minako leaves on her vacation to Iwatodai.

**Judas Kiss**

"It's weird," said Yosuke, as he and Minako sat across from each other at one of the tables in the Junes Food Court. "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Minako smiled. "Listen to you," she told him. "You've been spending too much time with Teddie. Usually he's the one spouting the archaic clichés."

She had expected Yosuke to start stammering, or to snap at her like he normally did when anyone remarked on how similar he and Teddie had been growing every since the two of them had started working at Junes together almost two years ago. Instead, though, Yosuke didn't say anything. Minako waited, wondering if he was just trying to come up with the best, most biting comeback, but it was almost as if he hadn't heard her at all.

"Hey, Yosuke?" she asked, after a moment. "Are you listening? What's wrong?"

"What? Oh, it's nothing." She heard Yosuke move uncomfortably around in the plastic chair. It made a squeaky sort of noise as his weight shifted against it. "Sorry, I was just…thinking."

"Thinking?" inquired Minako.

"Yeah…" Yosuke laughed. "I guess even I do that sometimes."

Silence stood between them for a few moments, before Minako spoke up again. "What did you mean," she asked, "when you said that? You know, about things changing, and staying the same. What was that all about?"

"It's just…" Minako could hear the frown in Yosuke's voice. "A lot has happened since I started working here. When we moved here, I thought I was gonna hate this boring job out in the sticks, and at the beginning…well, I did."

"So," asked Minako. "What changed?"

"I, um…I met this girl," muttered Yosuke. "Saki-senpai. Suddenly, it was kind of fun, looking forward to coming to work after school."

Minako had heard that story before, at least once from each of her new Inaba friends. Chie always talked about Yosuke's former crush as though she wished Yosuke had never had to deal with meeting Saki, and then with getting over her. Rise pretty much seemed to agree with her, although Yukiko, who was a little gentler and more sympathetic by nature, never had much to say on the subject.

There was one thing that most of Yosuke's friends agreed on, though. No one, of course, deserved to die in the horrible way that Saki had, but Saki hadn't been worth all of the pining that Yosuke had done after the fact. She hadn't been a very nice girl to begin with, and she hadn't cared at all about Yosuke the way that he'd cared about her. She hadn't been worth the time that he was still spending thinking about her, even if it was a sad and horrible shame about the way she'd had to go.

The only person who seemed to feel differently about things was Yu, who had once told Minako that he'd met Yosuke for the first time only days before Saki's murder. Yosuke, Yu had told her, had been a different guy, then. Sure, he was still a jokester, still always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and being adorably clueless at all the wrong moments, but back then, there had been something more sincere about it. Ever since Saki's death, Yu had said, Yosuke was just a little older, a little less carefree. It had changed him, apparently, and Yu had expressed some regret that he'd never really gotten a chance to know the person that Yosuke had been before Saki.

"It's weird," Yosuke was saying. "I never thought I'd still be here, two years later. I mean, I don't have to keep working here. My dad doesn't really need the help, not with all the high school kids that are trying to make an extra buck. I make plenty of money through my weekend job at the school store. I don't know why I'm spending my break here. Maybe it's because I used to look forward to it so much when she was here. The feeling kinda sticks around, you know?"

Minako did know. "Breakfast," she admitted, "is still my favorite meal of the day…mostly because it's the only one that Shinji and I used to be able to eat together, before I had to leave for work. That doesn't make much sense…it's been a long time since he's been gone. Still, I guess he left me that."

"I don't really know what happened with Shinjiro-san," remarked Yosuke thoughtfully. "But, don't worry, I'm not gonna ask…I know it's none of my business, but…it had something to do with Adachi, right? I mean, with him running around loose, and Dojima-san keeping you late at work every night to deal with it…that was part of it, wasn't it?"

Minako was very glad, for a moment, that she couldn't meet his eyes. "Yes," she said, and it came out much more squeakily than she'd intended. He was…definitely a factor."

Yosuke muttered something unintelligible to himself, under his breath. "I thought so," he told her eventually. "I knew it was something like that. Damnit, that guy has taken so much away from everyone. First he ruined Namatame's life, then mine, and then yours. And you know what the worst part is? He got away with it. They're all dead…Miss Yamano, Saki-senpai…"

"Shinjiro's not dead," interrupted Minako, perhaps a bit too sharply. Maybe it was because Shinjiro had, for all intents and purposes, been dead once that she was so eager not to hear Yosuke refer to him that way unnecessarily.

"Oh, right, sure," said Yosuke, correcting himself hastily. "Yeah, I know, and that's good, but…but that thing you had together, that's dead, right?"

That sent another stab of pain through Minako's chest. Yes, she thought, that was true. No matter how many times she tried to tell herself that they still had a chance, Yosuke was right. She'd killed the thing that she and Shinjiro were trying to create when she'd made all the worst choices during the previous summer. She'd killed it just as dead as Tohru had killed that poor Saki girl. It was just as unlikely to ever come back as those horribly hung women. Could love, wondered Minako, really die? When people died, what happened to them? Did they go to some afterlife, or someplace beyond mortal reach? So, then, what happened to a dead love? Would she find it again, someday, after she'd left everything behind?

"But somehow," Yosuke was mumbling, more and more angrily as he got farther into his argument. "Somehow, that guy is still alive. After everything he's taken away from us, what did we do? We gave him another chance at life. We didn't turn him in when we could have. We just…we just let it all go. We let Saki go, we let Shinjiro go…"

As the words tumbled out of Yosuke's mouth, Minako felt herself sinking a little farther down into her chair with every vitriolic line he spat. She had to force herself to remember that, although she couldn't see him, he could see her, and she probably shouldn't give him any reason to be suspicious. For the longest time since the incident with the snake shadow, Yosuke hadn't said anything about Tohru. She hadn't brought it up, and had, at least in the last week or so, been hoping that maybe, just maybe, Yosuke had started moving past the things that had happened. She had almost been ready to tell him the truth about what had happened to end her relationship with Shinjiro, and what had, she now had to admit to herself, been happening very recently, if reluctantly and against her better judgment, between her and Tohru in the Velvet Room.

"It makes me feel like I let them all down," Yosuke continued. She could picture the defeated look on his face, the slump of his shoulders, just the way he'd looked when she'd been trying to cheer him up and talk him into believing that she really would and could help him save his partner, back when this mess had all begun. "It makes me feel like this is my fault, somehow. What kind of a friend just lets stuff like that go? I can't just move on like this. It wouldn't be right. Hell, it makes me feel like Judas. When I think that I had the chance to finally get vengeance for their deaths, and I just…I just did nothing. I just sat there and hated him and did nothing! What the hell…"

"He saved our lives," Minako reminded Yosuke meekly.

Yosuke snorted with derision. "_You_ saved our lives," he reminded her. "It's not like he was going to come on his own. You forced him in there in the first place, right? He didn't have a choice, he was your prisoner. He had to defend himself, that's what got us all out of there alive. You were the one that made the decision. Oh, and Nanako, Nanako helped a lot. But if it had been up to him, and if he hadn't had to beat those shadows to save his own neck, he'd have watched us all get mutilated by that thing. He'd have laughed. Hell, it would have been fun for him. That's just the kind of piece of shit he is."

So, thought Minako, that was how Yosuke had been justifying this to himself. If that was how he felt about it, if he really considered that he'd betrayed Saki just by letting another human being live, then what on earth did that make Minako? She hadn't just let him live, she'd…she'd taken him back into her life. She knew her face was flushing hotly when she thought about the night she'd let him walk her home, and had invited him, no, almost insisted that he come in and spend the night with her. He'd been ready to leave, and she could have let him. No, she'd asked him to stay. She'd kissed him and brought down his guard. Minako couldn't pretend, anymore, that being with Tohru was something that had happened by accident, or by the perverse whims of the shadows. It was on her head, now. She'd wanted it, and she'd done it…and that was far worse than any betrayal Yosuke had committed just by staying silent about Tohru's existence in the Velvet Room. She'd known what she was doing, this time. She'd just decided that she didn't care. It had been easier not to care about it when there had been no one else there to condemn her. Now, it was a different story. Now, she felt like dirt.

But, said the little voice in the back of Minako's mind, it wasn't about Yosuke. She knew that she hadn't done any of these things because she wanted to hurt him, or because he wasn't important to her. She'd done what she'd done because of something totally different, because there was another person out there who was, in a strange, twisted, ill-advised way, becoming important to her. Did caring about one person really make caring about another person wrong, just because those two people had hurt each other? Did that mean that Minako was forced to hurt one of them? In the end, wouldn't that only prolong the cycle, and deepen the damage?

"I thought I loved her," mumbled Yosuke.

"What?" The word 'love' snapped Minako back out of her self-deprecating reverie.

"Saki-senpai," Yosuke clarified. "I…I thought I loved her. I mean, who knows, love's a…a really big deal, and maybe I've never…but I thought I did. I guess I didn't, after all. I guess that's what all this means; I guess I couldn't have loved her if I'm willing to just let her killer walk away. That's not what love is. At least I think I know that much."

"It's possible," murmured Minako, "to love someone even if you can't hate their enemies."

Yosuke's hand smacked down so hard on the table that Minako sat up straighter in surprise.

"No," he told her. "It's not."


	3. Insomaniacal

**Author's Note: **This came from another writing exercise. I'm attempting a forty-minute free writing session before passing out for my obligatory pre-rehearsal power nap. Lately, I haven't been getting more than three hours of sleep a night…and thus, this story.

As is most of the stuff I write, possibly because I am too lazy (or exhausted) to be original, this piece is also a companion story to **Messiah**, and falls into the same arc as that story does. If you're looking at the timeline, this comes right after the big emotional scene on the evening of December 18.

**Insomaniacal**

Tohru Adachi couldn't sleep. Honestly. It wasn't possible. No matter how hard he tried, or what a long day he'd had, or how bored and tired he'd become, sleep just wasn't an option. Apparently, residents of the Velvet Room just weren't hard-wired for sleep. Time didn't really pass in there, so why bother wasting any of it? Sleep was something that made up for all the hours of the day you spent wishing you weren't awake. No passing of the hours meant no daytime, no nighttime, no mercy. He was always, agonizingly awake.

The funny part was, this wasn't really a new thing for him. Oh, of course, before he'd ended up trapped in the Velvet Room, he'd slept. It just wasn't very often, or very well, and never more than a few hours a night, if that. His sleep was sporadic, easily interrupted, always full of uncomfortable half-waking dreams that combined reality with fantasy in a very disturbing way.

Ever since he'd been a kid, Adachi had struggled to sleep. He'd been that little boy who'd come running out of his bedroom at two AM, begging for a glass of water just so that he could stay awake for a few more minutes. In high school, he'd snuck out to the clubs with his friends, and always been the last one to admit to being ready to go home. In college, he'd pulled all-nighters with the best of them, one grueling night after another.

At first, he'd figured he didn't need it. For some reason, his body was just rigged to operate differently. He could get things done when other people couldn't, could pull longer hours and use his nights for all sorts of things while other people were wasting them , snoring away. That had served him well at the beginning, when he'd first started out on the police force. He'd figured that special talent of his was going to help him get a long way. Instead, all it got him was an endless string of monotonous night shifts that never amounted to anything he could write home about.

Then, slowly, he'd begun to realize that even if he didn't need sleep, he wanted t. He craved it. There was a reason that people were always saying that a healthy, full-grown adult needed at least eight hours of sleep a night. No one was supposed to be conscious and functioning hour, after hour, after hour like him. His brain was always on, always working. There was no rest, no respite, and he couldn't get away from the things that had begun to plague him or perseverate in the darker recesses of his mind. He wanted to turn it off, to relax, to slow down, but that never happened. He was constantly focused, constantly in touch with world around him. It started to waste him.

Other people, when they were miserable, or angry would go off and try to "sleep it off," knowing that they'd "probably feel better in the morning." Adachi didn't. He'd just lie there and brood over the injustice of whatever it was, wishing he could close his eyes for a few minutes and just shut all of it out. All of the people, all of the shit, all of the things that nobody thought he was paying attention to, all of the lies that they told. He wanted to forget about it and get away from it, but nothing ever worked. There was nowhere to hide from the constant, sickening consciousness.

After years and years of that, lying awake in his chair in the Velvet Room felt like nothing new. The only difference was that this time, he needed a moment to recharge. After the events of the night before, there were so many feelings racing break-neck through his head at the same time that he could barely breathe from trying to feel them all at once. Some of them were brand new, totally unfamiliar, and deeply unwelcome. If he could only turn it all off for just a few hours, maybe he'd have enough time to make some sense out of himself, and find his way back from the bottom of whatever he'd fallen into.

Maybe it was true, he thought, what those obnoxious sleep-study scientists said, on all those time-wasting infomercials.

Maybe insomnia really could drive you insane.


	4. Playtime

**Author's Note: **I'm not supposed to be touching my Adachi x Minako stories until Friday at midnight…I made that promise to myself to ensure that I get all of my work done before I get engrossed and obsessed with that story again.

Still, I was surfing around on **Yuruya-sama**'s Deviantart last night, and I came across some amazingly wonderful Adachi x Minako pictures that she drew, and…well, I couldn't help myself. I had to stop what I was doing and write something. Now, though, seriously, no more of this pairing until Friday, and I mean it this time!

I wrote this after listening to a very interesting presentation in my Preschool Policy class, about some research that was done on the percentage of criminals and murderers who were not played with sufficiently as children. I mean, I confess, I didn't believe it was anything more than a cliché at first, but the literature and the research does show that murderers and criminals suffer from a lack of sufficient childhood playtime…and from that concept came this story.

Now, I REALLY have to get back to my exams…egods. I hope you enjoy. Thanks to you all for being so inspiring!

This story falls probably a long time after the events of **Messiah**, and is unexpectedly fluffy…don't expect too much fluff from the next few chapters of **Messiah. **

**Playtime**

"Hey, listen," said Tohru Adachi, forcing himself painfully out of the tiny TV that Minako kept in her living room. "We really have to talk about you getting a bigger monitor…I mean, I don't think I can lose any more weight, and my leg's starting to get this kinda cramp, and…wait, what the hell are you doing?"

Minako was sitting cross-legged on the ground, already wearing those pajamas that didn't fit her quite right; the ones that she'd borrowed from that friend of hers…Yukari, maybe, or something like that. She was frowning intently down at a flat piece of cardboard and a set of little letter tiles that were lying in a heap at her feet.

"Uh," remarked Adachi.

"It's Scrabble," Minako informed him, without looking up. "It's a word game. I'm trying to practice using my eyes again, and I thought that this might be a good way to start. See, I have to use all of the letters to put words together, and in order to put the words together, I have to be able to find all of the available combinations, so that what I really need to focus on is-!"

"Right. Okay." Settling down next to her, Adachi yawned. "You want me to come back later? Not like I've got anything else to do, but if You, Yourself, and You are having some kind of juvenile slumber party, then hey, don't let me interrupt."

Minako flicked a letter tile over to him, and it clattered to a halt just in front of his right hand.

"It's not juvenile," she informed him. "I told you, its practice." Suddenly, a smile started to spread out from the corners of her lips, and she turned on him with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, the one that always managed to piss Adachi off and turn him on at the same time. "You think you're pretty smart, don't you?"

"Am I supposed to answer that?" he asked. "I mean…I'm pretty much screwed either way, right? If I say yes, I'm an egotist, and if I say no, I'm an idiot, so…"

"So," finished Minako, "You try, then. See if you can make a word out of this."

Adachi rolled his eyes. "Seriously?"

"Seriously," agreed Minako. "Come on, it won't kill you. I thought you liked showing off. Besides, if you beat me I'll put the game away."

Adachi grinned at her. "And then what?"

"And then," Minako retorted, "I'll be open to suggestions. So, are you in or out?"

Letting out a long suffering sigh, Adachi sprawled out on the ground next to Minako's goddamn game. "Fine, try me," he said, not trying too hard to mask the boredom in his voice. "What have we got here, uh….CPLUTER."

"Puter," said Minako. "If only we had a C and an O…oh, and an M, I suppose…"

"Curt," announced Adachi, reaching out and moving a few tiles around until he'd formed the word he wanted. "There. What else you got?"

Minako wrinkled her nose at him. "Isn't that spelled with a K?"

"It is not," Adachi informed her. "Jeez, sometimes I forget you never went to college. Good thing you're nice to look at."

Minako glared at him, planting her hands on her hips as her eyes flashed dangerously in his direction. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she demanded.

Adachi tried not to notice how goddamn gorgeous she was when she got angry.

"Means exactly what I said," he told her, reaching into the pile of tiles for a new set, partly so that she wouldn't see the look on his face. "Come on, give me another one. Let's get this over with."

"No," insisted Minako. "It's my turn this time. Here." She reached into his hand and pulled out several tiles, laying them out in front of her on the floor.

"JKOOREB," read Adachi with a yawn.

"I'm supposed to read them," Minako reminded him. "I'm the one re-learning how to see, remember?"

"By all means, please," drawled Adachi. "Read the damn tiles, be my guest."

Minako frowned down at them, her finger hovering over each one as she tried to parse them in her mind and with her eyes. Adachi caught himself smiling as he watched her thinking, forcing herself through what had to be a complicated step by step of remembering all over again what it was like to connect images with thoughts and thoughts with images.

"Are you sure you don't want me to-?" he began.

"Shut up," snapped Minako. "Here, I've got it." She selected a few tiles and laid them out on the floor in front of them.

"J-E-R-K," she said triumphantly.

Adachi snorted out a laugh. "Nice," he said. "That's cute. Anyone ever told you that you've got a knack for that whole 'tact' thing?"

"Your turn," muttered Minako, raising an eyebrow at him.

Adachi shrugged. Reaching into the pile, he pulled out a selection of tiles at random, and dumped them on the floor at Minako's feet. Miraculously, they all landed face-up and he began reading them off to her while trying to sort them out in his head at the same time.

"L," he said. "VBTXOE."

"Uh oh," said Minako. "An X. I bet you can't make anything out of that."

Adachi, however, had already found a way to make a word with the tiles he had. The trouble was, it wasn't necessarily a word he wanted to use. Frustrated, he scanned the tiles a few more times, hoping that there might be something else in there that he hadn't seen the first time around. Unfortunately, there wasn't.

"What, can't find anything?" asked Minako.

Adachi bit his lip. Reaching for the tiles, he laid out L-O-V-E at Minako's feet, and then glared down at the word while Minako spent a few moments poring over and it forcing her eyes to practice reading.

"Oh!" she said in surprise.

Adachi sighed. "Well? It counts, doesn't it?"

For some reason, Minako wasn't looking at him. "Of course it counts," she murmured. "It's just that, uh…" She stammered to a stop, apparently too flustered to get the rest of whatever it was off of her mind.

Adachi had a feeling he knew what the trouble was, and he was all too eager to assuage her fears on the subject. "Hey, I'm not gonna make you read it out loud," he assured her. "I mean, I know you can read it, right? If you say you can, I believe you, and that's the point of this whole game, so…"

"Yes," agreed Minako, sounding relieved. "Exactly."

At the same moment, Adachi and Minako both reached out to brush the tiles away, and then recoiled from each other as their fingers met in the middle and came into electric contact.

"Um," mumbled Adachi.


	5. The Hunger

**Author's Note: **Again with the forty minute free-write thing. I ran out of food money for the week as of yesterday, due to some unfortunate emergency expenditures. It's only Sunday, I've got a whole week ahead of me, and all there is in my house is half a box of life cereal.

As usual when I'm feeling slightly less than my usual peppy self, I'm going to free-write some Adachi. His arcana seems particularly appropriate for my mood at the moment…

And as usual, this story falls during the timeline of my persona series, although I'm not sure where, and you are welcome to decide that for yourself. It's probably somewhere during **Messiah.**

**The Hunger**

Adachi's stomach growled. The sound stood out and echoed noisily around the Velvet Room. Igor, as usual, gave Adachi a disapproving look, as though the sound had disturbed whatever kind of inner peace that guy was always trying so goddamn hard to demonstrate. Adachi just shrugged. It didn't happen that often. He never even got hungry in the Velvet Room, except when he'd just come back in from some contact with the outside world. The outside world still saw him, sort of, as a human being…or at least, as human enough to need the basic staples, like food and sleep. Maybe Igor didn't need them, but Adachi did…sometimes. He held on to those needs with a covetous vengeance. They were, in many ways, his last legitimate connection to the real life that he wished he was still living.

Before he'd started rising up in the ranks of the police force, and long before he'd transferred to Inaba to be Dojima-san's gopher, Adachi had learned what it was like to be really hungry. Like most kids just out of college, he'd insisted on breaking away from his parents, and had refused all their attempts to throw their money at him, in what had, at the time, been something like the attitude of the noble ascetic. Maybe it had been stupid…okay, he corrected himself, it had definitely been stupid, but it had been his first chance to grasp for his own independence, and most kids did pretty much the same idiotic thing when given the opportunity. At any rate, he'd starved himself for the sake of being a grown man, and he'd spent plenty of nights listening to the angry grumblings of his insides as they complained to him about the food he hadn't been able to afford to eat that day.

The strange thing was that, at the time, Adachi hadn't minded the hunger. He'd almost liked it. That twisted feeling that his guts got when he started starving them to death was sort of a mark of pride for him, a little physical twinge that reminded him that he was strong enough to go without, even if it hurt a little bit. It was adversity, and he was facing it. That was what a real man was supposed to do, right? It gave him a chance to show himself that when times got tough, he could get tougher.

He remembered what that felt like, later in life, especially when he started living in Inaba. Sometimes, when he came home after a long day of being ordered around and shouted at by the man who was supposedly his "partner," he would sit in his living room all night and watch TV without eating any dinner. Partially, it was because he couldn't cook, and was too lazy most evenings to order out. There was another reason, too, though. Sometimes, he did it just because he liked to remind himself that he could, that there was power that came from the ability to deprive himself. There were lots of things that he wanted, that he knew he couldn't have. He wanted a better position, a better paycheck, and the respect of his peers at work, especially of Dojima, although he'd never, ever admit that to anyone out loud. He wanted the women who scowled at him and wouldn't even meet his eyes when he checked them out on the street. There were other things too, that he desperately wished he didn't want; things like the kind of family that Dojima-san and that Narukami kid came home to at night. Those things were all out of his reach, and he knew it was a waste of time to try and aim for them, especially after the murders began, and he gave himself up to the knowledge that he wasn't the man that part of him wished he could have been in another life.

What he did have, though, was the hunger. They couldn't starve him of what he wanted, because he was more than able to starve himself, and to feel the pain without suffering for it, or letting it bring him down. He could overcome the hunger, could dominate it, just the same way that he could overcome the rest of the shit that life threw at him, and the things that he wasn't supposed to want.

At least, he thought, that was how it had felt before. Now, trapped in the Velvet Room, without anything left to strive for or prove to anyone, he was sick of the hunger, and of forcing himself to go without. It wasn't even his choice anymore. He hadn't had a choice of his own in a long time, and there was so little under his control that he had almost forgotten about why he'd bothered in the first place to try to control the stomach pangs.

Now, if he was honest with himself, he had to admit that what he wanted most in this whole sick crap-laden world was a sandwich. Preferably without mayonnaise….but he would have been willing to compromise on that part.


	6. Brushstrokes

**Author's Note: **Another forty minute free-write, this time inspired by the wonderful and talented **Yuruya-sama**, who did some amazing artwork for my stories on Deviantart! Please do go check out her gallery, you won't be disappointed. It's worth it!

I suppose this one takes place during the Christmas Day moments in **Messiah.** I guess we can call it a deleted scene. Idea taken from the moment in Adachi's social link, when he draws Nanako the flower.

**Brushstrokes**

Empty Chinese food cartons lay abandoned on the table, while the ending credits of the movie rolled. Tohru was still lounging on the sofa, with one arm draped lazily over Minako's shoulders, while she tore into one of the envelopes she'd received in yesterday's mail.

"What are you doing?" Tohru asked, snatching the envelope out of Minako's fingers. She listened to the little, crackling, papery sound of him deftly slitting it open. "You're gonna break whatever's in there if you tear at it like that. Here." He handed it back to her. "So? What did you get? A check from the family?"

"I don't have a family," Minako reminded him. "It's from Mitsuru…" Taking his hand, she guided his fingers across to the little raised "K" mark on the bottom of the envelope, the mark that let her know that the letter came on the stationary of the Kirijo Group. "It's probably the yearly Christmas card. She sent me one last year, even though we spent most of the holiday in the same room. She really believes in the little formalities."

"Yikes," muttered Tohru. "She sounds…uh…like my mother, actually. Do me a favor and don't introduce us."

Minako laughed. "Don't worry," she assured him sincerely, "I won't." There wasn't much chance, she thought, of her introducing Tohru to any of her SEES friends, other than Junpei, if she could possibly help it.

She sighed, as she fingered the envelope, reluctant to pull out the card, even though she knew that Mitsuru would, very thoughtfully, have given her something tactile that she could understand, even without the use of her eyes. "She's not going to be very happy with me," murmured Minako ruefully. "This is the second year in a row that I've been alive, fully conscious, and yet haven't sent out a single Christmas card."

"You don't like them?" asked Tohru. "Yeah, I can understand that. I don't like them either, much…it's such a hassle, having to find the right way to suck up to every single person on your list…even the ones you haven't seen in years, don't remember, or don't even like. If you're really unlucky, people will write you thank you notes…" He groaned. "What a drag. Like they really care about anything more than making sure you send a better check next year…"

"No," said Minako, shaking her head. "It's not that. I don't mind sending them, I just…I never know exactly what to send. Other people have photographs, but I…I don't really have anything they'd want to see."

"Huh." Tohru apparently had to think about that for a moment. "Hell, you could just draw a Christmas tree or something. Lots of people half-ass it, like that."

"But," insisted Minako, "I can't draw. I mean…even before the Seal, I couldn't draw. I'm hopeless at it. I can't even make a good stick figure!"

"And now," muttered Tohru thoughtfully, "you're probably even shittier at it…yeah, okay." She heard the frown in his voice, before she felt him sit up a little straighter and shift against her on the sofa. "Hey, you got a pencil?"

Minako thought that she probably did. "Why?" she asked, as she stood up and crossed over to the kitchen, to rummage around in the drawers for some kind of writing implement. "Um, will a pen do? Actually…how about a crayon?"

Tohru laughed. "Again with the kid stuff," he said. "Yeah, bring the crayon, I guess."

Minako retrieved the crayon, and carried it back over to the sofa with her, holding it out in Tohru's direction. He took it from her, paused for a moment, and then snorted out a laugh.

"You know this is pink, right?" he asked her.

"No," admitted Minako. "I had no idea."

"You're really taxing my artist's skills, here, blind girl," murmured Tohru. "Here, give me that envelope."

She passed it over to him, and listened for a few minutes as the crayon slid and scratched its way across the envelope paper. "Um…" he said after a moment. Minako smiled. She could hear the way his voice muffled ever so slightly every time he tapped the crayon against his moving lips. "Well, okay, it's pink, but…here, it's a Christmas tree."

He thrust the envelope at her, and she accepted it.

"Thank you," she said politely. "But…um…Tohru? I can't see it."

"Oh, right, sure." He sounded a little embarrassed. "Yeah, that's kinda the point, isn't it? Heh. Uh…."

Suddenly, he moved a little closer to her across the cushions. Instead of putting his arm around her again, he touched his fingertips to the bare place on her shoulder, where her sweater had slipped off during the movie.

"What are you-?" she began.

She stopped, as his fingers began to trace gently but deftly along her skin, first up, then out, then down, ad back across the arm again. It tickled, and tingled a bit, and she felt a little shiver run across her shoulders.

"Hold still," commanded Tohru. "I'm drawing you a Christmas tree. You know, one that you can see."

Minako smiled, and closed her eyes, letting the tree begin to take shape in her mind as she felt the brushstrokes of his fingers playing across his makeshift canvass.

"Oh, now I see it," she told him. "You never told me that you were an artist."

There was just a hint of pride in Tohru's voice, as he mumbled, "Yeah, well…you never asked. Maybe it's one of my hidden talents…"


End file.
